Mr E's nautical first birthday

Ah so a few weeks ago now we finally put everything together and had Mr E's first birthday party.
I chose a nautical theme because, well I thought it was cute and he couldn't choose.

But also because that's the theme of his nursery. Not that I really used much from his room but I used it for inspiration.
Now I'm not very creative naturally, I find I really have to try. And also we don't have much money, especially to spend on this sort of thing; however, of course, I want my boy to have the best of everything.
So I decided to make everything myself and try to save money that way, I set us a strict budget of $200 with about 25 people. The hard part about a first birthday party is that parents stay, which means more food. We decided to have Elijahs party at 1pm to make sure it wasnt a set meal time.
Unfortunately I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked as our camera died.
Note to all birthday party parents, charge your camera the night before!
I spent ages trawling through pinterest and Etsy to get ideas of things to do.
So I began cooking and creating the week before.

I made little flags for on all our straws

He had a 'ONE' banner and lots of red and blue balloons everywhere

Of course his birthday cake, which I wanted to do a fondant one but it was above my budget so we had to change.

And he had a smash the cake, which he was a little confused about!

We had half a watermelon emptied out and filled with fruit salad, to look like a boat

I had little tooth pick sails in most of our food; Banana muffins, mini quiches, cheerios, caramel slice, jaffas, cheese and biscuit platter, sandwiches

And my sugar cookies made in the shapes of ships and life bouys, and of coursed iced to decorate!

Everything was in our blue, red and white theme and I think it looked great.

Unfortunately we couldn't have it at our house as hubby is a builder so (of course) we are going through renovations.

We had it at a little park about 20 minutes away from our house so it was fun to set it all up, not.

The park was gorgeous and had a little creek running down the back which was great for the older kids that were there.

Ahh the party bags were my favourite and were probably the part that blew my budget, we had a bucket, blow up beach ball, mini tub of playdough, foam bath toy and baby fruit stick.

 As I said I am slightly upset at not having photos of all things but here are some of my little man opening presents ans enjoying his day.

I do have some of his cakes but I will have to add them later :)